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Me quoted in Fairfax papers on tax haven use Me quoted by Georgia Wilkins in The Age (and other Fairfax publications) today.
John Passant, from the school of political science and international relations, at the Australian National University, said the trend noted by Computershare was further evidence multinationals did not take global regulators seriously.
”US companies are doing this on the hard-nosed basis that any [regulatory] changes that will be made won’t have an impact on their ability to avoid tax,” he said.
”They think it is going to take a long time for the G20 to take action, or that they are just all talk.”
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Archive for 'Tax the rich'

Given the widespread opposition to the 2014 Budget, the one percent have drawn an important lesson from that debacle – consult with the intended victims before launching attacks on poor people and workers. That is what the tax discussion paper is about. This Damascene conversion to talking to people begs the question – is a tax shit sandwich no longer a shit sandwich if it has consultation sprinkles on top? To ask the question is to answer it. The solution to the tax and budgetary dilemmas seems pretty clear. Tax the rich.

The outcome of neoliberal policy since 1983, when Hawke Labor began implementing it and laid out the red carpet for Howard and then Abbott, has been a massive shift in wealth in Australia from labour to capital. The process of neoliberal regulatory capture in tax policy and tax law has now, if Second Commissioner Mills’ speech is any indication, also successfully infected the administration of the Australian Tax Office. All the sweet words in the world will not disguise the fact that the fox is now in charge of the revenue hen house.

I have an article on tax avoidance and the G20 in Green Left Weekly. Here is how I finish it up: The best way to address the shift in wealth from labour to capital is not through the tax system but through fighting for big real wage increases. Our task should be to help build […]

I agree with Finance Minister Matthias Cormann. Taxing the rich and well off could easily address the Budget ‘emergency’ and have enough left over to adequately fund better public health, public education and public transport as well as a move to a fully renewable energy society over the next decade.

The one percent has captured not only Parliament and tax policy but tax administration now too. If that is true, the conclusion we might then reach is that the slaughter of Tax Office jobs currently under way is actually an attempt to administratively reduce taxes on capital by weakening the capacity of the ATO to tax the rich and powerful. Certainly that fits in neatly with the neoliberal cut taxes mantra of most politicians and the Treasury.

Let’s be clear here. Australia’s budget deficit is around ten percent of GDP, a very modest amount compared to other developed countries, and half of it a consequence of Abbott government decisions. Australia is a low tax and a low spending country. If we moved to the average tax rate of OECD countries we’d raise about an extra $100 billion a year. It is time not just to chant tax the rich but to mobilise around it as part of a wider push for socially progressive policies on jobs, the environment, indigenous Australians, asylum seekers, gays and lesbians, public health, public education, public transport, disability, pensions, child care and the like.

Why aren’t taxes on the rich on the agenda, instead of attacking pensioners, sacking tens of thousands of public servants, cutting public transport, health and education spending and slashing funding to the mildly critical ABC and the world ranking CSIRO? I’ll tell you why.

Because the priorities of this government, like all the governments before it, is profit, not people. The Abbott government, like Labor before it, is involved in an attempt to shift massive amounts of wealth to the rich from labour and the poor.

Company tax avoidance is not a failing of capitalism: it is its logical expression.
There are two ways to really tax the rich. The first is for workers to win bigger pay increases to stop the bosses getting their hands on more of our money before they can play funny buggers with it. The second is to overthrow the capitalist system which produces corporate tax avoidance.

‘Forrest has never signed a corporate income tax cheque for any of the listed companies he has run in the past 16 years. And FMG has another $700 million in tax losses still to bring to account before he will have to do so.’ Laura Tingle AFR 17 June 2011.